Inman News published a news flash about a partnership between Yahoo! and Zillow on listing ads. In the article, Steve Schultz, head of Yahoo! Real Estate, said part of the reason for the partnership is:
Because listings and advertisements have become so closely intertwined, it makes practical sense for Zillow to also handle for-sale listings feeds, said Steve Schultz, head of Yahoo Real Estate.
“The listing is, in many cases, part of the ad product, so it’s very difficult to separate out the discussion,” Schultz said. “It’s important for clarity for the agent or broker to have one phone number to call to work out issues with their free listing or enhanced listing.”
From the MLS perspective, this quote reminds me of three prior posts here on the FBS Blog:
I continue to think that the real estate industry would benefit from more clearly defining what part of the listing constitutes an advertisement and what doesn’t, because the licensing terms for the two could be quite different, with the former having fewer terms and restrictions than the latter.
9:24 pm
that’s a smart distinction. It could be as easy as making the background color of MLS entry fields one color for public and another for member-only. This way the agent has a visual cue for his audience when entering information.